


Strange Harbours

by mumblefox



Series: Across, Around, and Upside Down [4]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: M/M, Original Character(s), Post-Season/Series 01, asexual Keith
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-02
Updated: 2017-01-02
Packaged: 2018-09-14 02:46:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9155425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mumblefox/pseuds/mumblefox
Summary: Immediately following the events of the season 1 finale, the Red and Black Lions fall out of the damaged wormhole. All that's left is to survive.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This fic's irreverent working title (tm) was 'wwhy is ur sad shit gettin so long and sappy. stop' because I originally intended this to be like 4k but whoops. I'm over on [tumblr](http://mumblefox.tumblr.com)! Come say hi!

 

 

There had never been a chance, really, of getting away clean.

Assaulting Zarkon’s base was the craziest thing they could have done, and they’d risked everything for just a chance - at rescuing Allura, at proving themselves worthy of the title of Paladin, worthy of the Lions. At scaring Zarkon, even a little.

The craziest thing they could have done.

But damn if they hadn’t succeeded. A little worse for wear, maybe, but it was still a success.

Until Haggar. Until the wormhole. Until Keith, beaten half to death inside Red’s cockpit, was sucked back out into the vacuum of space.

Impressions on either side, too quick to track: of yellow and green and blue and chrome, impassive yellow eyes flaring brightly before being swallowed by the torrent of energy they travelled through. Screaming over the comms going abruptly silent, one voice at a time. An ache of desperation, of denial, of being _so close_ as he yanked the throttle, tumbling. Throat raw as he begged Red to fight.

She wanted to, but she was more battered than he was. Neither of them had anything left to give. The lights in the cockpit flickered weakly and went out. As it went dark, he craned their head around to see out her eyes, to see the castle one last time -

A shock of pain just below his knee, a screech of metal, and Red flared up, one last stand -

And they saw a great black head, jaws clamped onto Red’s leg, yellow eyes burning fiercely as they tumbled out of the wormhole and Black was dragged behind.

It spat them out in shocking brightness, right next to a torrent of solar energy that linked three stars, all of them swirling the drain of a black hole. Black’s thrusters fired, and Keith braced himself, checked the seals on his suit, and diverted power from the life support systems to Red's boosters. It wasn’t a lot of help.

His helmet stayed ominously silent. If Shiro was piloting Black, if he was conscious, if he was even still in there, Keith couldn’t tell. But Black wasn’t letting go, and together, the two of them limped far enough from the gravity well that they could power down and recharge.

They drifted. No power to comms, no power to screens. Not a lot of air in his suit. A catalogue of aches and pains clawing their way to the forefront of his mind. There was something seriously wrong with one - no, two - of his ribs, on the right side. Breathing was a sharp pain, but he couldn’t know if they were bruised or fractured or broken.

He tasted blood, wished he could spit. Tried to calm down.

A pinwheel galaxy spun above them, impossibly far away. It wasn’t the Milky Way, but for a minute, Keith let himself pretend it was - just a step away from Earth, from a chance to rest. Just a breath away from a time when life was much simpler and much safer.

He let himself be homesick for a minute, and then he folded it down like an old shirt and put it away. Then he pressed a hand against Red’s console, closed his eyes, and reached for her.

She was there - weak, quiet, exhausted. She knew what he wanted from her, but she wanted him to ask. Wanted to hear his voice.

“Hey, girl. I’m okay. We got pretty roughed up, huh?"

A flare of emotion, then, bright and hot and pleasant. They'd fought well. He'd fought well. Taking on Zarkon was a choice they'd made together, and it had been right.

"Good. And you're gonna be okay?"

She spared a moment to be wistful about the safety of her hangar, but answered in the affirmative. She just needed time.

"Listen, I need you to ask Black - is Shiro - is he in there? Is he hurt?”

A pause. Then: _yes_.

His heart flipped over in his chest. “Yes, you’ll ask, or yes, he’s hurt?”

_Yes,_ she said again, and he drummed both fists on his helmet, frustrated.

“Does he need help?”

Silence, for a long moment, for long enough that he almost asked again. Then: _yes._

His heart was a kickdrum as he slapped a hand on the hatch release, but nothing happened. He tried again. Nothing. “Red, open your hatch. I’m going over.”

Nothing. Shiro - he couldn’t think - how bad was it? His pulse was crawling up his throat, a sensation like swallowing a whole meatball in reverse. He flicked an override, kicked a thruster pedal because he couldn’t think of anything else to try. “Red!”

She stirred, curled against him. Black hadn’t let go, and they both ignored the twinge of pain in their leg. _He lives,_ she said. _You must stay with me._

“I’m not going far, and I’ll come back right away,” he said, hating this, hating how childish he sounded. He folded that away as well. “I need to make sure. Please, I need to see him.”

Red sighed, and rolled a spool of thought out to him: regret, acquiescence, comfort. She would give him anything, but there was a problem. She hesitated, then, just a flicker of doubt, and then their bond stretched, reached out. The space around Keith warped, bubbling out, the dimensions changing as his awareness of Red and himself and the cockpit grew to encompass -

Black. Through his link with Red, he could feel her, could feel her fatigued jaws clamped on their leg, knowing it hurt but not willing to chance losing them when she’d lost all the others. A storm of impressions rolled over him - how bitterly she clung to her failure to keep them safe, and how furiously she resented their defeat, and that she’d been tortured, overridden, forced to spit out her Paladin. But she swept it aside for him, and reached out to Keith, and in the maelstrom of Black’s anguish he could feel the life she cradled to her chest.

“Let me see him,” he said, ragged, and felt himself being pulled deeper.

He realized, all at once, that this was the river. He remembered the way it had tugged and flowed after their first time forming Voltron, remembered the way it reflected the light. This was more like drowning than ever before, and he didn’t care. The current dragged him down.

To Shiro. He wasn’t in the chair. He sat huddled on the floor of Black’s cockpit, slumped over a wound in his side. His hand glowed faintly, lit the gloom a ghostly purple.

This was the problem; this is why Keith couldn’t go to him. His suit was breached. Black couldn’t open her hatch without exposing him to space.

Keith felt the faintest echo of the wound, of the cold metal floor, of the blood leaking between his fingers. Ragged breathing inside a helmet. There was no way to reach out. He tried broadcasting sympathy, relief, sorrow - tried yelling. He was drifting along the edge of an echo, no way to be heard - but still, after a time, Shiro lifted his head and stared into the dark. He tried to lift his hand, winced, let it drop back down. He whispered Keith’s name into the emptiness of the cockpit, a question.

Keith pressed on Red’s console as though their link could disconnect him from himself, as though he could drift straight through her mind, through Black’s, to where Shiro sat in the dark. _Yeah, Shiro. I’m here. Oh, honey, you’re gonna be okay._

There was no chance that Shiro heard. Keith watched - or felt - or sensed - the dull knock of his helmet as he tipped his head back against Black’s bulkhead, breath hissing between his teeth.

He couldn’t pilot, couldn’t even stand. Black whispered an image to him, a memory, of Shiro being thrown from the chair when they had been yanked from the castle. Of him passing out from the pain, just for an instant, when he tried to get back up. Of the spots that swam in his eyes even now, just from sitting.

Keith ran through their options. Red was dead weight, unable to power even life support systems. He was slowly suffocating in his suit. Black had power, but she felt - wrong. Scrambled. Something in her system was corrupted, or infected, or just broken, and she was running diagnostics. She could scan, but wouldn’t trust the results, and it might draw the attention of the Galra. She could fly them somewhere, if it was close enough, but she didn’t know where to go and neither did he.

It wouldn’t be long, he told himself. The castle had to be out of the wormhole by now. Allura would locate them, would come for them.

Unless it had been destroyed. Unless Allura had died. Unless -

No use wondering. Those things were out of his control.

She would come for them, or they would die here.

Out of his control.

They drifted, for a long time, in the emptiness of space. Keith tried to get comfortable with the blood in his mouth, with the sharp pain of his breathing, but couldn't. Above them, the pinwheel galaxy turned. Behind them, far closer, the stars spun in blinding silence around the black hole that was devouring them.

Nothing Keith could do.

So he just watched over Shiro, as long as Black would let him. She approved, rolled a purr of welcome across their link. Trying not to intrude on Red’s territory, trying not to overwhelm him. It was a near thing, still, but he refused to admit he was fraying at the edges, stretched too thin by trying to hold Red and Black and himself in alignment.

But he was going to stay, no matter the effort. He had to. Even if...things got bad, for Shiro. He would stay. He could do that much. He had to believe this wouldn’t be the last -

All at once, Keith was pulled away, yanked out, a sensation like tipping over backwards. Red was pinging an alert at him: a hail. A ship approaching. He got a grip on his brain, on being crammed back into one tiny person after the expansiveness of feeling both Black and Red at once. The empty space where Shiro used to be ached.

She flashed him diagnostics: they were out of options.

_Paladin_ , Red said, _we cannot fight. We can run, but we cannot escape._

Keith thought of Shiro, took stock of his own injuries. They were both in bad shape. “Can you put up the barrier?”

She pushed an image at him: Black’s teeth on their leg. She could be made to let go, if he wished it.

Keith settled back in his chair. His breath wasn’t coming easily, and he didn’t know if it was from the diminishing oxygen or from his injured ribs. “No,” he said. “Wherever we go, we go together.”

So he sat with Red, grim and proud and resolute, and together they watched the ship approach and swallow them all.

 

* * *

 

The aliens that took them in were slow. Keith watched them maneuver the Lions gingerly, almost reverently, into a secure hangar, each of their four tentacle arms moving with careful, thoughtful grace, more like seaweed in a current than an intentional action at all. Turning 180 degrees took them about fifteen full seconds. Everything they did was floaty - they moved by pushing off with their spindly hind legs, which might actually be tentacles, or ferns, and then drifting until they had to correct their course or push off again. They moved as though they were underwater all the time, or like gravity wasn’t really a hard and fast rule for them.

They didn’t attempt to force their way into the Lions, but they gathered around as the ship turned slowly, ponderously, and the slow rolling rhythm of their engines indicated a destination. Their transparent skins were all slightly different hues, soft as seaglass, but in a group like that, they blurred into each other, a blob of tiny organs and brains and wispy, floaty tendrils.

Keith watched them through Red’s eyes, trying to figure out what the hell he was supposed to do now. He had his bayard, and they didn’t look dangerous. If he had to, he could probably fight his way through them, take over the ship. But where would they go after that? The ship moved like a freighter, but he wasn’t sure how common the ability to open a stable portal was.

And they could be anywhere.

For the first time, as he sat alone and battered in the dark, with the ship’s lights filtering down to him through Red’s eyes, he let the vastness of their predicament hit him. It bloomed in his chest just like fear, with the pull of a growing vacuum. The castle, being shaken to pieces by the wormhole as he tumbled away from it. Allura inside somewhere, freshly rescued. He hadn’t even seen her before being separated again, didn’t know if she was hurt or not. Hadn’t seen any of them. The screams of the other Paladins, vanishing one by one, still rang in his ears.

The castle. Gone. LanceHunkPidge _Home_.

Red couldn’t feel her sisters. Wherever they rest of them had ended up, they were either dead or very, very far away. The entire breadth of the universe, maybe. No way to know. There was so much he didn’t know.

He was trying hard not to think of Shiro - huddled cold and alone and injured inside Black, so close but so unreachable - but he wasn’t having much success. Could be he was dying in there while Keith struggled to make a plan, to act.

It would be easier to do, he told himself, if he wasn’t so damn tired. When had he slept last? His mind rolled back, past the rescue mission where he’d fought Zarkon, past the attack on the Galra’s base where he’d fought the druid. He’d tried to sleep on the way there, hadn’t really been successful.

Two ass-kickings in a row without sleep. Two very long days.

He didn’t know what to do.

He was in the process of tying himself in knots about it when one of the aliens floated up, slowly, to peer directly into Red’s left eye. Keith froze, stared uncomfortably back, not sure if it could see him. For a few long ticks, nothing at all happened. Then...

_There is a little creature in your head, did you know?_ it said.

Keith jumped. He’d heard the words with his ears, even though there was no way sound could travel to him in there.

_Does it need help? Do you need help?_

It was talking to Red, he realized, and before he could decide what to do about it, the seal on the cockpit hissed as it broke, and Red opened her mouth.

Keith sighed, then stood with a bruised groan. He didn’t know what to do, but maybe she did. At this point, he was too tired to keep fighting.

He would trust her. It had saved him before.

So he poked his head out, moving slow, hands up. The aliens, gathered below, didn’t react. “My name is Keith,” he said, speaking slowly, enunciating carefully. Probably louder than was necessary, too, but that just happened when he was nervous. “And I’ll take whatever help you can give us.”

_We are Caretaker_ , said the alien, drifting down to Keith’s level, tendrils floating. _Tell us how we may assist._

“My friend is in the Black Lion,” he said immediately. “He’s injured.”

The collective drifted off the ground, and two individuals separated, floated over to look in Black’s eyes. _Hello, great mother_ , they said. Keith heard the voice as though it were being spoken in his ear. _May we assist?_

And at last, with a great hiss of pressure release, Black cracked open her jaw, and Keith could breathe again.

The two aliens drifted into her open mouth, and the one in front of Keith reached a tentacle arm out to him. He shifted his gaze reluctantly from Black to the alien and made no move to touch it.

_Your friend will survive,_ it said kindly. _He is asking for you._

Keith knocked on his helmet experimentally, but the alien’s voice wasn’t coming through the comms. It was in his ears, or directly in his brain, maybe. He squinted against a sudden suspicion. “How do you speak our language?”

_We do not,_ said Caretaker. _We are not speaking a language._

But that’s -

Whatever.

“Where are you taking us?” he said instead. He felt safe with these creatures, and it put his back up. It wasn’t like him to trust easily.

_Home_ , it said, or they said, or didn’t say. Keith was trying not to get too frustrated with figuring this out.

Pidge would love this, he thought, and had to bite his cheek to keep the rush of loss from overwhelming him.

“We’re on the run,” he said, because he couldn’t think anymore. Fatigue sat in his chest, heavy, a black pit his body longed to slide down into. “If the Galra find us, we’re dead.”

_We understand. You are safe with us, Paladin Keith._

He almost asked how it - they - knew to call him Paladin, then realized that he was just gonna have to get used to being confused around these guys. They were speaking some kind of not-language directly into his brain and the Lions trusted them and he had no other option, at this point, than to go with it.

He reached out cautiously, not sure if the extended tentacle was an invitation or not, and the alien met him halfway. Letting go of Red made his heart kick in his chest, but its hold was impossibly gentle as it guided him down to Black in the reduced gravity, and they arrived just as the other two floated Shiro out.

There was a patch of clear plasma of some kind over his wound, and his helmet was off, and he smiled when he saw Keith, though it wasn’t the kind of smile that came from happiness. It was more like the satisfaction of a question being answered favourably, of things aligning correctly. Of the world set back to order.

“I gotta stop making you rescue me,” he said, and Keith’s answering smile was incandescent, a glow so true that it chased his weariness back.

“Good to have you back,” he said, and Shiro closed his eyes, mouth still turned up at the edges, and let himself slip into unconsciousness at last.

The aliens - creatures - Caretaker - shuttled them away together, away from the Lions. Keith twisted around to watch them recede, nervous, but Red soothed it away. There was a hint of amusement lingering under her presence in his mind, a weary affection.

All at once, Keith got it.

“You’ve met the Lions before,” he said, not sure which of the surrounding aliens he was addressing. “They know you.”

_We have known them by many names,_ one of them said. It was impossible to tell which one. _We have known many of their Paladins._

“You called me a little creature inside Red’s head,” Keith said.

_It was a joke,_ Caretaker said, _that they have always liked._

That was too strange to contemplate, so Keith ignored it. “You can fix them, then?”

_We are Caretaker,_ they said simply. _It is what we do._

 

* * *

 

Their home planet was only a short journey away. It was small, and warm, and composed entirely of oceans and mountains, and the whole thing shimmered with an energy Keith could see with the naked eye.

Shiro slept as they swept down for a landing on the surface of the water, slept as they were unloaded into smaller ships and scuttled away to a facility on land, set at the base of one of the mountains. The gravity here was the same as it had been on the ship: negligible. Keith kept a hand on Shiro’s stretcher and let himself be pulled along as they passed into the mountain’s shadow, acutely aware of the bulk of the rock above them, of the incredible mass and age of it.

A flicker of memory, half-fuzzed by how distracted he’d been at the time: this was the same feeling as when they’d walked between the Lions in the depths of their Voltron hangover, Lance’s shoulder bumping his, Shiro’s hand in his. Connected.

His chest ached. Wherever they’d ended up, he hoped they were safe. They had to be.

The facility was less a facility and more a locale. There was no roof, no building. Thin metal partitions had been installed to separate a series of shelves that had been carved into the mountainside. They couldn’t have been natural, but if there was a tool that could carve rock to be smooth as water, Keith didn’t know it. He added it to the list of questions he didn’t really need an answer to, and let it go.

Two Caretakers guided Shiro from the transport bed to one such shelf with the utmost gentleness, with their characteristic patience. Keith eyed the openness of the facility and itched for his armour, but Caretaker had insisted they would not need it, that they were safe, that they would heal better without it. It was nearby, at least, both his and Shiro’s armour jumbled up inside a crate that travelled with them.

As soon as Shiro’s skin touched the rock, he let out a sigh. The lines between his eyebrows, where the pinch of pain had been constant, eased at once.

Keith felt something in his chest unclench. There was a shelf above Shiro’s, like stairs, and a Caretaker held out an arm and guided him up to it. As soon as his hand touched down, skin to rock, a wave of cooling energy curled up his arm, chased the pain away, calmed and invigorated him all at once. He hissed in a breath, dizzy with how good he felt. Something in his injured ribs shifted, painlessly, with an audible click.

The one Caretaker remained, and the other drifted off, presumably to look in on other patients, though Keith hadn’t seen any on their way in.

He rolled over, just enough to see that Shiro still slept easily. The wound on his side pulsed a malicious purple, and Keith didn’t think they were out of the woods yet.

The remaining Caretaker settled to the ground, and its translucent skin shifted hue, turned the orange-brown of the rock. It seemed to sigh.

“He’s going to be okay, right?”

_It is a difficult wound,_ they said. _Poisonous. Caretaker will draw it out. It will take time._

“You’re going to draw it out? How?”

The alien settled further, said nothing. Keith felt the energy that surrounded the planet pulsing in him, a slow and unfathomably large heartbeat that pulled him along just as his river did.

“Are you Caretaker,” he said slowly, “or is the planet Caretaker?”

_Yes,_ they said, a little teasingly, and Keith lay back with a groan and let the steady current of the planet pull him, at last, into sleep.

 

* * *

 

He woke to the same feeling of being at once invigorated and soothed, and the first thought his brain seized on was that it didn’t hurt to breathe.

He sat up, twisted sideways to look down at Shiro, who was exactly where Keith had left him. The Caretaker was there, too, still settled in the exact same spot.

There was no way to tell how much time had passed. The sun had moved, sure, but there was no way the day/night cycle was the same length as Earth’s. He could stay, could try for more sleep, but he was full of energy and antsy with it; he pushed off the rock regretfully, drifting with mindful precision over Shiro.

The Caretaker slowly swam up into the air as he drifted down, and reached up to guide him. Keith accepted the help without hesitation and offered a smile of thanks. He wasn’t sure if a smile translated for the Caretakers. They didn’t even seem to have faces. Maybe a smile was rude in their culture?

Well, it’s what humans did, so he went with it. The Caretaker didn’t seem offended, but they never seemed to be ruffled by much of anything.

_How do you feel?_ Caretaker said, pressing gingerly at his ribs. Keith took a full breath, in and out, lungs stretching his chest to capacity, and he smiled to himself. Funny how a lack of pain could improve your mood.

“I feel great, actually. I’m not even hungry.”

_Caretaker provides_ , Caretaker said, and there was a smile in their voice. _Would you like to explore?_

Keith thought of the soaring, craggy mountain peaks they’d glided through on their landing trajectory, of the vast oceans that sparkled in the warm sun, of the restlessness burning in his veins. It wasn’t a frantic pull, not like his river, not like the caged bird that had driven him skyward, so many years ago. It felt nothing like the insistent calling of Blue, out in the desert alone and lonely. Instead it was something welcoming, a simple and sweet feeling of utter capability. Right now, he felt like he could do anything.

So what did he want to do?

The planet - and that was a heck of a strange thought - had known what his body needed. Maybe it knew what his heart needed, too. What he wanted was to go.

He almost went. Almost didn’t even question it.

But Shiro would be here, alone. Keith pulled back. “Wait, sorry,” he said. “I can’t leave him here like this.”

_We understand,_ said Caretaker at once, _but he will not be alone. We are with him. He is safe._

Keith blew out a breath, scrubbed a hand through his hair. “I know, but if someone sees him...if he has a nightmare or...if he wakes up alone...” He didn’t have to reach for practical reasons; they were alone on a strange planet, at the mercy of creatures they’d met only hours ago, and the Lions were still only half-functional, sleeping in secret inside a vast cavern nearby. They were vulnerable, and Keith wasn’t quite willing to risk Shiro for a simple thing like itchy feet.

“Sorry,” he said again, and meant it. “I’m going to stay.”

_We understand,_ Caretaker said again. _We only want you to be well. Do you have questions for us?_

Keith almost said no, just because it would irritate Pidge - and probably Coran, and Hunk. He could imagine Pidge at her keyboard, eyebrows lifting above her glasses in abject judgement: what do you _mean_ you didn’t even try to learn about them?

The thought brought a tide of absurd fondness, of hope deferred. They'd made it out alive. They had to have. He couldn’t afford to think about anything else.

Questions. Right. He scratched his head, looked across at Shiro in an absent gesture, like smoothing the dog-eared corner of a book. He wanted to ask: where are we? Can you help me find my friends? Maybe even - goddammit, maybe wormholes affected time. Should he ask what year it was? No - their calendar wouldn’t align with his, and he wouldn’t understand any answer they gave. He might not understand the answer to _where_ , either. He was a pilot, dammit, not an astrophysicist.

What he settled on, eventually, was: “how can we breathe in your atmosphere?” He didn’t know a lot about space, but he knew the chances of gaseous composition randomly being compatible with human biology were...low.

_Caretaker provides,_ they said. _We are capable of adapting to accommodate any species._

“Well, that’s...convenient.” He didn’t even want to know the specifics of that process. “You can heal us, too. How do you know how to do that? Is it part of the…” He wiggled his fingers next to his temple.

The Caretaker lifted all four of its tentacles and wiggled them next to its cortex, far slower than Keith had done. It seemed amused by the gesture. _No_ , they said. _Your body knows. Caretaker provides the energy it needs._

“And I’m not hungry because…”

_Food is energy. Caretaker provides._

Well, that didn’t sound entirely correct, but Keith didn’t know enough about food to contradict them.

"I still think I would feel better if I ate something," he said. Even if it was goop. He started mentally preparing himself for what passed for food among a species that didn't even have mouths.

_This is common. Our stores are vast. You will have to show us what your species can eat._

Keith glanced at Shiro, still asleep. The wound in his side was smaller, was less purple and menacing. A good sign. "I can't leave him alone. Do you have...I don't know, fruit? Like an orange? Or...bread?" How could it be this hard to think of what humans normally ate?

The Caretaker was performing their version of a curiously tilted head, tentacles hovering askew, curved in the shape of a raised eyebrow.

What was food made of? Sugar? Fibre? He couldn't ask them to bring him fibre. Bread was made of grain, but what if they didn't have grain? Why was he even thinking of - he couldn't ask them to bring him a handful of goddamn grain, either.

Get it together, Kogane.

"I'd have to look at what you have," he said, a little embarrassed, and the Caretaker bobbed in understanding. "So I guess it'll have to wait."

_We will bring you choices,_ Caretaker said helpfully.

"No, I - " He stopped, not sure what kind of answer he'd been about to give. They'd done more than enough helping, and Keith already didn't know how to pay this debt. There was no use denying that his heart still tugged at him, itching to explore. He could feel Red, safe in the depths of the cavern, sleepily keeping tabs on him as her systems recharged in the planet's glow.

Maybe this was okay. Maybe, for once, everything would be okay.

While he deliberated, another Caretaker drifted through the door and settled down near Shiro’s head, and while it was settling another came in, then another, until their little corner of the mountain was swimming in floating limbs in pale jewel tones, a fluttering sea of gentle motion that obscured Shiro from view.

They were doing it again - answering a question he hadn't asked, providing for a need he hadn't even been aware of.

_He is safe_ , they said.

"Promise me," Keith whispered.

_We swear it._

It was enough. He trusted Red, trusted them. He took a last look at Shiro, only barely visible in a sea of soft colour, resting peacefully in the warm sun under the shifting shade of their limbs.

"Let's go," he said, and pushed off the ground just as he’d seen the Caretakers do, following one of them out into their world.

 

* * *

 

His initial impressions of the planet had been correct: it had sharply-hewn mountains that jabbed into the sky and plunged straight into the ocean, and almost nothing else. In any other case, such a landscape would be boring and ugly. Severe. But there was that energy, hovering over all of it, making it glow. Reaching through everything on the planet. Suffusing it with light. The flat water and bare rock were made beautiful with it.

He wondered at the lack of plant life, chided himself for thinking of it as odd. He couldn't apply Earth standards to everything. It was an unfair reflex, and he should have abandoned it long ago.

It wasn't practical to cling to Earth like that. He would probably never see it again. The thought didn't trouble him as much as it used to; when he'd agreed to pilot Voltron, he'd understood it to be a permanent assignment, and had started letting go of the idea of returning. Most of the others hadn't. He thought of Lance, of how deeply the homesickness affected him, like he'd lost his center of gravity.

But Keith had made a new home in the castle of Lions, and he missed that more.

The doorway that led to the Lions was just outside their partition, within bolting distance if something went wrong. Keith hadn't had to insist on staying close to them; the Caretakers had placed them that way without prompting.

A history, there. He wondered if he should ask about the previous Paladins.

_We are here,_ said Caretaker, and he promptly hopped off his train of thought.

The storeroom was a cave that stretched into the mountain until its end was lost in the gloom. Somewhere near the back, something was moving. Too solid to be a Caretaker, too quick. Another patient, then. Keith looked at the shelves, at their contents, boxes marked in Galra runes, in Galra colours. Well, it made sense. Most people these days were Galra. Every so often, a different alphabet emerged, and Keith found himself staring at them, wondering what had become of the people who had used it.

The other person in the food stores continued rummaging around. His back was to them, and he was bent over, investigating a jumble of cans on a lower shelf. The pockets of his flight suit were stuffed with previous prizes; Keith could see the top of a wrapper that looked a lot like a candy bar sticking out of one of them.

_Peace,_ warned Caretaker. _Our truce is inviolable._

What? Why -

But then the other guy turned, and Keith went rigid.

Furred purple face, yellow eyes, clawed hands.

Galra.

Keith vibrated, torn between the urge to run and the urge to stay and hope he wouldn't be seen. Then the Galra looked up from where he'd been suspiciously sniffing an open container and his face lit up. "Hey!" he said, shoving the box back on the shelf and waving to Keith frantically. "Other people! Oh, stars and comets, am I glad to see you!"

Keith didn't move. He didn't know how to react to that. The greeting hadn’t seemed like a threat, but the guy was definitely Galra, and that was never good.

Was the Galra the name of the species or of the empire? He'd never had to ask before.

"I am getting so tired of Balkka and her...whatever it is, her anthropological observations, or something.” The Galra clanked his way over, jars bumping in his pockets. The flight suit was large enough to contain three of his wiry frame; the sleeves were rolled up so much that he couldn't put his arms down at his sides, so they hung akimbo. “Oh, man, sorry, I'm Rext. Division 502."

He held out a fist, which Keith, on reflex, reached out to bump. Rext didn't quite seem like he was expecting that, but let it happen.

"I'm, uh...Keith." What was that! What was that! Who gives their real name to the enemy! Why couldn't he think of a fake name?

"Nice to meet you, uh'Keeth. What's your division?"

Make up a number, Keith's brain said. "I don't have one," Keith's mouth said.

What a fucking moron.

Rext held up his hands in a shrug. "Rebellion, huh? No, it's cool, I get it. Not everyone wants to be Galra. I'm not gonna rat you out. Caretaker's truce, you know."

By degrees, Keith started to relax. It was hard not to. Rext and his friendly chattiness reminded him of Hunk. "Sorry. Didn't mean to make it weird," he said.

"No problem, man. Hey, you ever watch Life of Thoraci? I've been missing that show so fierce down here, but my crew is grounded while Caretaker gets the radiation out of their systems. Have you seen the newest episode?" As he rambled, he cracked open another container, sniffed it, put his ears back, and shoved it to the back of the shelf. "Man, whatever's in there is almost capable of language. That's been growing a long time." He scratched behind a purple tufted ear. "Hey, Caretaker, you gotta get someone to come in and clean this stuff out once in awhile. It's gnarly in here."

Keeping one eye on Rext, Keith started picking up and inspecting the jars and containers of food. Stores from all over the galaxy, donations made against a debt or against future need. "You meant what you said? Not everyone wants to be part of the empire?" He unscrewed a lid on something that looked like carrots and smelled like an outhouse. When it hit the air, the contents turned a poisonous yellow. He hurriedly put it back.

"Sure, yeah, I get it. I mean, my people weren't always Galra, you know? It's kinda weird to think about that, now. It's how it is for us, but other people are new to it. I imagine there's a pretty severe adjustment period. But it's not all bad! My family hasn't had to be military in generations because the empire has us covered, and if the crops go bad they ship stuff in from other planets. We take care of our own."

"But wouldn't you rather be free?"

Rext gave him an odd look. "This is already so much more interesting than Ixor's old poetry. If I have to hear one more line from _The Might of Zarkon_ I'm gonna leave him here. Anyway, your question isn't really a correct one. We're already free. It's not like we go through our days scraping our noses bowing to our overlords - yes mister Galra, no mister Galra, thank you mister Galra - we just have to participate in empire stuff like military summons and donations and taxes. Contribute, you know? But we've been Galra for like, 8000 sols, so it's all business as usual."

He chuckled, then took an experimental taste of a paste in a jar. His face lit up. "Oh, nice! Bulple! I haven't had this stuff since I was a kid." He tucked it into one of the giant pockets on his flight suit and kept rummaging. "It's a weird question. I think if we were to be suddenly _not_ Galra, it'd be chaos, you know? I'm happy the way it is."

Keith hummed thoughtfully, changed the subject, didn't care if it was obvious. "So what happened to your crew?"

"Ah, I misspoke, they're not - I mean they're my crew in that I'm part of the crew. But I'm not the Captain or anything, just a botanist. I grow our food. And, it turns out, collect it. No one starves on Caretaker, but you feel weird when you just don't eat, you know? Have you ever seen a Galra when they've been without food for five days? It's not pretty."

He dumped out a small crate and started loading his finds into it, now that his pockets were full. "Actually, Captain got hit pretty hard. I think Caretaker's the only thing in the universe that could have saved her. That's what you get for being the last one into the evac pods. I was the first because I'm a little coward and always have been." He chuckled, not embarrassed by that at all. "It was the usual. Jump went wrong, got too close to a star, shielding got burned away. Not every calculation is perfect, right? But luckily we were near enough that the Caretakers could come get us."

"They can't go very far, then?"

"Nah. If they go too far from the planet, they just die. If they spend too long off it, they die too. It's a very fragile ecosystem, apparently. Oh, man, now I sound like Balkka. But yeah, they tried to station a Caretaker on a couple ships, right when they were first discovered, but it went badly, and Caretaker can save you from anything. Too valuable a resource to mess with, you know? So it's hands off, across the board. Only contact is in emergencies."

He dug a spoon out of an inner pocket and started eating the weird paste, more absorbed in the conversation now than the hunt for edibles. "What's your story? Lemme guess, an empire ship shot you down? You sure got pale when you saw me in here."

_I got in a fistfight with your emperor_ , Keith thought. He smiled thinly. "Something like that."

"Aw, c'mon, I'm not gonna tell anyone. I'm dying for some new stories around here. I love my crew and all, but damn - " He waved the spoon at Keith. "They just are not very interesting people after seven rotations, you know? Fundamentally, as people, they are boring. Oh, sorry, did you want to try?" He held the jar out to Keith, and Keith smiled at him helplessly. He missed Hunk more with every second he spent talking to this guy, but it was a pleasant sort of missing him, to be reminded like this.

"Nah, thanks. I can tell you're enjoying it way more than I would."

"It's my favourite," Rext said happily. "C'mon, let's find something for you. You're carbon-based, right? Plant matter or animal matter?"

Keith blinked. "Uh...both, I guess."

"Omnivore. Nice. It took me days to figure out how they organized this place, by the way. Not very efficient!" This last was said loudly, directed at Caretaker. They didn't answer except with a bloom of good will, appreciating the friendly criticism.

"Did you figure out what the Caretakers eat?"

"Oh, man, no, it's so cool, check this out. They don't eat anything. You've figured out they're a collective, right? Hive mind? They're literally, physically, part of the planet. Sort of like your hands are alive, but you're their brain. Get it? The energy of the planet is what feeds them, because they are the planet. That's why they help whoever they can find. It's how the planet recharges. Some kind of energy exchange. People come here, join up into Caretaker's energy flow or whatever, they get better, and Caretaker has a greater sum of energy than before. When they leave, there's a piece of them keeping the planet alive, mixed in with the energy of everything else that's been here. Man, that's way poetic and hoopy-doopy. I sound like Ixor. See, I've been here too long."

"Can I ask you a question?"

"Oh, man, I would LOVE if you would help me carry this conversation a little. Is it personal? I'd tell you my blood type, at this point. I'm desperate. Lay it on me."

Keith frowned. "No, it's something you said. About Caretaker being able to fix anything."

Rext's mouth curved into a considering line. The tip of a pointed tooth poked out over his top lip. "Well, yeah. Every record we have is of complete success. Total regeneration, reconstitution, whatever. As long as you're alive when you make contact with the first Caretaker - that's important, I think, it was a quiz question that I argued with an instructor about in the academy - you don't die. That we know of. I think it's impossible for there to be, you know, objective truth or whatever, but as far as we can tell, that's the case: Caretaker can fix anything except death."

Keith turned away, pretended to reach to the back corner of a deep shelf.

Anything, he'd said.

Keith barely even wanted to think it, but -

Shiro's arm.

If they stayed here long enough, could he get his arm back? Maybe he didn't even want to; the Galra tech was an edge he could hardly afford to give up, especially without his bayard. Or maybe he'd want to and it wouldn't work, in which case it would be cruel to get his hopes up.

Fair's fair. Keith had to tell him.

"Ah! Here!"

Keith looked over, pulling what felt like a bag of beans from the back of the shelf as he did so. When he glanced down, he saw they were tiny, dried eyeballs. He dropped it so fast his own hand hit him in the chest, and even though he hadn't touched anything but the bag, he wiped his hand self-consciously on his shirt.

Rext laughed, and when Keith looked over, he was holding ration packs.

Keith stared.

The label was in an alphabet he could read.

"This stuff is in the right area, I think. I mean, I can't test it. There are at least three things in this ingredient list that would kill me, no joke. Does any of this look familiar?"

Yes, he wanted to say. He recognized the mission insignia.

"Uh'Keeth, buddy. You look like you've just sat on a swatma. Ohhh, is it poison? Did I just offer you poison? I swear I didn't mean it, I'm just, uh...look, I'm not actually very good at my job, okay, I got it because the last guy got pregnant and I just lied like a tiny bit -"

Keith stopped listening. These were the freeze-dried, standard-issue ration packs that had been sent on the Kerberos mission.

And here they were, somehow, flung into the back corner of a storage shed on a planet that could talk to people using its hands, or something. And here he was, yanked off Earth and now talking to a Galra who was holding the food that had been meant for Shiro.

He saw the opportunity for anger pass him by like a single-car grav train. Gone before he could even consider climbing aboard.

Instead, he felt oddly calm.

Whatever else they'd done, whatever else they'd been through - this, at least, seemed like predetermination. Like they were meant to end up here. Like they always would have ended up here.

"Thanks, Rext," Keith said quietly. The Galra paused, mouth open around the sentence that Keith had interrupted.

"Say what now?"

"They're perfect," Keith said. "Never would have found them without you."

"Oh, well I - I mean, you're welcome. This stuff looks kinda gross, though. Wish I could find you something better, but the selection here is really limited. Carbon's rare in this part of the universe, I guess."

What did Keith know about carbon? Just that it was an excellent conductor and that, when pressed hard enough, it turned into diamond.

Keith thought of Shiro, pressed by Galra hands into something hard and strong. "Maybe," he said, and smiled. "But we're human. We always find our way back to each other."

"Is that what your species is called? Human? Sorry, is that rude to ask?"

"No, we're human. And you're Galra."

"Ha! What gave it away? Was it the fur? I bet it was the fur."

"The ears," Keith said, and Rext laughed. "It's been...nice...to meet you, Rext the Galra."

"Same to you, Uh'Keeth the Human. Hey, if you're bored, come visit, okay? Just ask Caretaker and they'll bring you to us. I know Eretani would like you, she's also sort of quiet and weird."

"Sounds like I would like Eretani," he said, waving over his shoulder, and Rext laughed again.

"Vrepit sa! Come visit!"

As Keith made his way back to Shiro, arms full of ration packs, he wondered at that: the Galra. Not the empire, but the people. Not the enemy, even. Just the people.

He wished Shiro could meet Rext. He didn't think that was a bridge he was ready to cross just yet, but if he was...they'd get along.

It was a problem for another day. They might have way more of those here than he'd originally thought.

 

* * *

 

Keith drifted his way back, touching his toes to the ground for just long enough to push himself off again. He only had to do so about every ten seconds. The trip down the mountain still went too quickly, but he spent it looking around him, looking across the curve of the rock to the water below, where a few Caretakers drifted along the surface of the water. The one who'd guided him to the stores was gone, but Keith didn't feel alone. He wondered if the escort had ever been necessary, or if it was just because he was reassured by a physical presence.

Needs he didn't know he had. It would hardly be the first time.

"Hey, Caretaker?" he said, and around him, the energy rippled.

_We are with you, Paladin Keith._

"I never said thanks. For saving us."

_You are most welcome._ A pause, then, heavy with deliberation. _You are welcome to stay,_ they said, _as long as you like._

The answer to a question he hadn't wanted to ask. Keith pushed off with his toes. Every time he touched down, skin to stone, Caretaker's energy sang up his legs.

He would talk to Shiro. If they stayed, it would have to be his call.

Their partition was still full of Caretakers, gentle tentacles waving as if in a current. Anemones - that was the word. When they were all together like this, they looked like anemones.

The difference was that Shiro was sitting up, tickled into laughing as a Caretaker pressed gently at his wounded side.

Keith stopped in the entrance, arms full, heart full. Shiro looked up at him through the sea-swirled haze of colour and smiled bright enough to light the world.

"They're telling me you made a friend," Shiro said, teasing.

Keith grinned. "Yeah, I don't know what came over me. I guess it helps when they give you presents." He waded carefully through the Caretakers, who started to rise, one by one, and drift away, and he dumped the ration packs in Shiro's lap.

There had been a possibility that Shiro would find them upsetting, that it would remind him of everything else that had been stolen from him. But Keith had been with him through the worst of his nightmares, and he'd picked up on enough of Shiro's PTSD to navigate with confidence.

He'd guessed that Shiro would find them either sad or really funny - and that was a strange, alarming sort of duality to contend with - but Shiro, upon realizing what he held, only shook his head.

"I was wondering where those had gotten to," he said seriously, but then a wry smile bloomed on his face. "Never could hide these freeze-dried peas well enough to keep them from Commander Holt. The man was a bloodhound. Where did you find them?"

"Caretaker has a storehouse with all kinds of stuff in it, donated by former patients. I ran into a G...uy there who dug them out of a crate."

Shiro shot him an eyebrow that said he'd heard the stumble, but he didn't push.

Keith sat down next to him, wiped his sweaty palms on his pants. Shiro dropped a pack of peas on the ground and toed it out of the way as though they were radioactive.

"Shiro. How much do you know about Caretaker?"

The weight of Shiro's attention fell fully on him, alerted by his change in demeanour. The answer he gave was comprehensive. "Hive mind: singular creature with multiple bodies. Telepathic abilities. Limited physical capability to harm, though I'm not sure about how far their mental abilities can go. They're not dangerous. Primary function seems to be to repair injuries."

Keith leaned back, stunned by the precision of the language but also by its tone. He'd never heard Shiro talk like that before. It was a trick he'd picked up fighting for the Galra, and Keith hated it instantly.

Shiro didn't notice. "And I know they're making me itchy." He scratched idly at his nose. The scar was still there, but maybe it was lighter than it had been. Impossible to say. Scar tissue was already healed tissue; maybe Caretaker's restorative abilities didn't stretch that far.

But Rext had said anything.

"Caretaker," Keith said. "I need to ask you a question about Shiro's arm."

_The answer is yes,_ Caretaker said, and something in their tone made Shiro's head lift like a hunting hawk's. _It will take time. But if he stays for long enough, he will regain the arm._

A moment, then, of shattering silence.

"How?" Shiro said, and a tremor ran under his voice, ran deep.

_We are Caretaker,_ they said, with the patience of ages. _It is what we do._

Keith shuffled back onto the shelf and drew his knees up to his chest. His job now was to be there for Shiro, and he would. "You don't have to," he said. "There's still time to decide."

Shiro stared at his prosthetic palm. He didn't say anything else. But then, after a time and very slowly, he curled his hand into a fist.

 

* * *

 

Shiro sat and thought. Shiro paced and scratched the back of his head. Shiro leaned his forehead against the stone and, Keith suspected, spoke silently to Caretaker.

Keith sat with him through all of it. Every so often, Shiro's eyes would drift over, an absent gesture, like checking your pocket for keys, and Keith remembered the Garrison, remembered where they'd started.

And he thought of how far they'd come.

"Shiro," he murmured, once Shiro's indecision had worn him down. Even with Caretaker running in his veins, he was getting ragged. "You're still recovering. It's time to sleep."

He almost argued; Keith could see it. And then he remembered their deal, and Keith could see that too. He slumped over to where Keith waited and tipped forward onto his shelf. As he curled up, his knees bumped up against Keith.

"I'm here, whatever you decide," he said quietly. He rearranged himself to get comfier as Shiro settled in. "You know I am."

"I know you are." He was still frustrated, but was, typically, taking care not to aim that anger at Keith. He couldn't imagine what was going through Shiro's head, and didn't envy him this decision.

Shiro settled by inches. His frustration meant he started out tense, but it was hard to hang onto with Caretaker surrounding them. They promoted rest and recovery, and this was part of it. Before long, Shiro slid back into sleep.

And now they were here, with Kerberos ration packs at their feet and Lions in the cavern nearby. Still alive. Still together, whatever that meant.

Keith sat with him until his butt fell asleep, then wormed his way out from under him and went back to his shelf for a nap of his own. Shiro would wake him. Caretaker would wake him.

They were going to be okay. No matter what Shiro decided, they were both going to be okay.

But Caretaker woke them sooner than he'd thought, a gentle pinging inside their brains. Keith was moving before he'd even fully woken, but Shiro struggled, groggy. Keith floated down to land in front of him, protective and present as always.

_Ships approaching_ , Caretaker said in their ears, _but there is no need to panic. You are safe. We will keep you secret._

“Thanks, Caretaker,” Keith said. He turned to find Shiro rubbing hard at his eyes and decided to distract him, for the moment, from the question that tugged at him. “How are you feeling? How’s your side?”

Shiro swept his hair out of his eyes, mouth going tight. “Hurts. Not as bad as it used to." He gave a bleak smile that wasn't a smile at all, really. "I’m starting to think it won’t kill me.”

“It’s not like you to be so grim,” Keith said, trying to make it sound like a joke. To his own ears it just came out scared.

Shiro sat up with a grimace, ignoring Keith’s protest, and swung his legs over the side of the shelf. Keith started to step back, to give him room, but Shiro grabbed his forearm and Keith froze, let the jolt of emotion root him in place.

Somewhere not very far off, there was a roar as ships entered the atmosphere.

“Keith, hey. I'm okay. Sorry. I didn’t mean to worry you.”

“Of course I worried,” Keith said, and his voice wasn’t working properly. He hoped Shiro wouldn’t notice. “I've been worried since we fought Zarkon. Shiro, we broke apart and you didn’t even say anything. None of us knew what was happening to you. By the time I came for you, it was too late, and then Zarkon…”

“I’m okay, Keith.” Shiro squeezed his arm, slid his hands to cover both of Keith’s, and Keith’s eyes burned at the corners. “We’re okay. You kept Zarkon off of us, off the castle. You're the reason we had any chance of escaping at all. You did fine."

Keith stared at their hands, at the subtle way they glowed with Caretaker's light. Like diamond dust under the skin. “I knew you were hurt and I couldn’t do anything about it for the longest time." He was whispering. It felt like a non-sequitur, but wasn't. Not quite. "I drifted with Black and I could see you, and I thought I was gonna have to watch you die.”

He was already standing as close as he dared, but he ached to step closer. The memory of Shiro bleeding out on the floor of Black’s cockpit felt suddenly very near, and he needed this Shiro - alive and breathing and seeing him clearly - to be nearer.

And Shiro, as if he somehow knew that - or as if he needed it too - wrapped his arms around Keith's waist and pulled him close.

In the weak gravity, Keith's feet drifted off the ground. His weight rested easily in Shiro's arms; his body fit neatly against Shiro's as though they had grown that way, two trees twined around each other. Shiro's face was pressed to his chest, and Keith dropped a hand to cradle the back of his neck.

For a moment, they just breathed.

It had been years since they were here, or at least it felt like it. The last time was during Shiro's first few hours back on Earth, on the dune outside the shack, in the cold of the predawn light. Shiro had still been wearing his prisoner clothing, had still been flighty and shivery and half-aware. In shock. Dissociating.

Whatever they had been before Kerberos, it hadn’t resurfaced. Keith had given Shiro room, had learned to see the cracks in him, had taught himself delicacy, tact, the art of the careful shoulder touch. There had been times he’d almost asked - did Shiro remember, did he miss Keith the way Keith missed him - but they had become a team, had been given a job to do, and Keith had quietly surrendered the hope that it could ever be the same as it was. Had quietly convinced himself that this was the next best thing: still a team, still at his side.

It wasn’t enough, but he’d long since learned to live on next to nothing. This was no different, except it was.

But now, finally, they were here.

"You're really okay," Keith said.

"Thanks to you."

"Thanks to Caretaker, you mean."

"No." There was a smile in Shiro's voice. "It was you. It's always been you." He paused, then laughed softly. "I just heard your heart speed up."

The smile on Keith's face was crooked, goofy. Honest. "Can't imagine why that would happen."

Shiro let him go, but kept his hands on Keith's hips as he settled back to the ground. "Do you remember, after we formed Voltron that first time..."

Keith's pulse beat hard in his neck. He didn't need to answer; none of them would ever forget that day.

"You said I missed safety. You were right. But...somewhere along the line, I started missing it a little less. And I think it was because of you."

“Shiro. I - ”

_Stop!_ shouted Caretaker, the volume the same as always but the emotion in the voice gut-wrenching. Keith broke away and Shiro shot to his feet, both instantly on alert for a threat they couldn’t see. _We are Caretaker! You cannot do this!_

"They’re not talking to us, are they?” Shiro had gone pale as he stood, body a punched-in curve around his injury. He looked - not weak, but fragile. Brittle. His mouth was a hard line.

Then, in the silence, they heard another sound: distant _whumping_ impacts. The slow whine of a weapon charging.

Caretaker screamed.

A horrible realization rocked Keith, and his eyes met Shiro’s. “They’re being attacked.”

_Please,_ Caretaker wailed. _Whoever you seek, they are not here._

Under their bare feet, Caretaker's energy field flickered and faded. Gravity tugged at them suddenly, a weight heavy as guilt; the weak gravity was something Caretaker had been sparing them without Keith even realizing it.

Shiro’s hand rested over the wound on his side, and his face was terrible.

More impacts, terribly close. Then a rumble that grew and grew. Over Shiro’s shoulder, above the rock that shielded them, a mountain peak shivered and began to crack and tumble. The shockwaves of the impact nearly threw the Paladins from their feet. _There are no Lions here. Please. We are only Caretaker. Please._

“They’re broadcasting to us. They’re asking us for help,” Keith said. His blood sang in anticipation of the fight - sang with knowing, for the first time since the wormhole, what he had to do - and he turned to rush back to Red, but found himself unable to.

Shiro was holding his arm. Holding him back.

“We can’t,” he said, looking Keith dead in the eye. “If they get us, it’s over for everyone. Red’s barely functional. Keith, if we go out there, we will lose.”

“They saved us,” Keith said. His guts were swimming, comprehending the reality of what Shiro was saying even though his mind wouldn’t. “They saved us, and we have to save them.”

“We can’t.”

“We can! We have to! Shiro, they don’t deserve this. They’re peaceful, they can’t defend themselves. They _saved us_ \- ” He tried to tug his arm free, and Shiro held on, and Keith stared at him as though he didn’t even recognize him. “Shiro, they’re _dying_. Because of us. Now let me go help them.”

Shiro’s expression was pleading, wretched, and Keith flew straight from desperation to fury. He twisted, broke Shiro’s hold, bolted for the door, but Shiro was faster. He caught the back of Keith’s shirt, hurled him backwards.

When Keith regained his balance, Shiro was standing between him and Red. She roared in the back of his brain, just as eager as he was.

But she couldn’t move either. He could feel Black’s paws pinning her, huge weights at neck and chest. Red acquiesced because she had to.

Keith did not.

He shifted his stance, and saw Shiro - whether he meant to or not - match him.

They'd sparred before, of course, Shiro preaching patience, Keith honing the edge of his temper on Shiro's steady mastery. They knew the strength of each other's arms - or they had known, before Kerberos, before the Galra, before Voltron.

Before.

Never had they fought without a mercy rule. Never in deadly earnest.

That, too, was before.

There was no agreement here, no preparation. There was just this: a partnership strung across years being pulled to its breaking point. There would be no winner, after this. No going back. There was nothing now but what he wouldn’t back down from.

And still, even as he threw the first punch, there was no part of him that wanted to fight Shiro.

Keith fought in desperation, and through it he brought a brutality that Shiro had never encountered in him. The first few exchanges found hard blocks, then saw hits landed: a swift punch into an opening, right to Shiro's ribs, right where Shiro’s injury was still barely healed. When he gasped, folded, Keith drove a sharp elbow into the bicep above his metal arm.

Brutal, dirty hits. Shiro shook out his arm, expression full of an unfamiliar violence, and Keith’s heart hammered, adrenaline and anger and fear. He bounced up on his toes. Took a shaking breath. Prepared to rush in. He knew Shiro was about to step back and recover his defence. Get square. Keith would have to get inside his guard before he could settle into it, or he'd never break through. It was how Shiro had always fought: with reserve, and with precision.

He realized, a split second too late, that Shiro was about to utilize neither of those things.

Shiro did not recover his defence. He darted forward, suddenly too big, too close, too fast - the lightning muscle of a lion, of a brawler. Keith jerked back, threw a defensive jab, hit hard abdominals. Couldn’t hit hard enough to stop it. Shiro dropped his shoulder, and then simply seized him by the leg and the waist and bore him to the ground.

As Keith toppled, he had a flash of unwelcome memory: musty training mats under him and bright lights overhead. Shiro, laughing as he twisted Keith into an easy pin. The jeers of his watching classmates. The thrum of his blood as he pressed his sweaty face into the mat and called mercy.

This time, he threw an elbow. It cracked against bone, and he felt Shiro's grip shift, just enough - he twisted, got a leg between their bodies, drove out with a knee. Shiro grunted in pain, recovered seamlessly, rolled Keith under him.

There was dirt in his teeth and more of it in his eyes. His shoulder ached from where he'd landed on it. The rock loomed above them, impassive, as they scuffled in its concealing shadow.

Somewhere close by, Caretaker was dying.

And so Keith lashed out, hopeless, struggling against Shiro's grip and somehow only getting himself pinned more tightly. This fight had been over as soon as he'd hit the ground, and he knew it. He'd never beaten Shiro in the grapple.

With his arms forced behind his back and his face in the dirt, Keith gave one final, fruitless kick and then lay still, panting. His gut was churning, his blood was boiling; he should have been able to do this, now that it mattered.

But then, over the deafening thud of his own heartbeat, he began to register that Shiro was talking. His stomach took a nauseating nosedive.

"Please," he said, and his voice was broken as though he'd been saying it for a while. "I don't want to hurt you, Keith, please, don't make me hurt you. Please, I can't. Please -"

Keith's shoulders ached in their sockets, fingers going numb from how hard Shiro was pinning his arms. But Shiro's forehead was pressed into the back of Keith's neck, and he was begging.

It occurred to Keith, suddenly, that Shiro hadn't struck him even once. He could feel his own landed punches in his knuckles, throbbing now that the adrenalin was wearing off. His elbow ached. His heart ached.

"Let me go, Shiro," he said quietly.

"I can't," he said in return, wretched.

The screams of Caretaker had stopped while they were fighting. In the silence, in the lifeless dirt, Keith let grief and guilt sear his veins.

But he stopped fighting. It was too late, now, anyway.

Shiro rolled off of him, recognizing defeat when he saw it. He didn’t go far. He laid on the ground next to Keith as he grieved, silent, sick to his stomach, and pressed it all down into something small enough to manage.

Like his homesickness, he folded it away. It took some time.

There was the fact of Shiro, lying next to him; there was the fact of Red, under the mountain, keening with sorrow for their lost Caretakers, for her lost sisters, for her Paladin's heavy heart. There was the fact of the silence that pressed down around him, even heavier, and broken at intervals by distant gunfire.

The universe needed its Caretakers. It needed genuine kindness.

This was a loss they should have prevented.

Shiro rolled over and climbed gingerly to his feet, hissing in pain. He started pulling his armour out of the crate Caretaker had given them, and Keith understood: they'd be found, if they stayed. Caretaker was dead, and it was time to go.

Shiro's wound was leaking blood, but the poisonous purple stain of it had gone. Caretaker had done that. Caretaker could have done more, if they'd done their job, too.

All at once, it wasn't grief that threatened to drown him. He rolled to his feet, Red's tail a lash in the back of his mind.

Normally, Keith's anger was a slow drip, sterile and controlled as an IV. He tasted it on the back of his tongue, hot and coppery, as it slid down his throat and tumbled down through the cavern of his chest. Normally, it lost its heat on the way down, landed cold and harmless and bled out through his shoes.

This anger was different. Right now, it felt like there was an umbrella opened up just underneath his ribcage. When he breathed, the spines of it jabbed him in the bones. And the anger that left the back of his throat with its bitter copper tang splashed against it still smoking and stayed there. Instead of the steady drip, he felt like he was swimming in it.

"The Shiro I knew at the Garrison would have fought for them."

He threw the words like knives, didn't care if they wounded. Shiro just tugged on a boot. "The Shiro you knew at the Garrison would have," he said. "And he would have been wrong, and he would have gotten both of us killed. I was naive back then. None of us can afford to think that way anymore."

The coppery taste of his anger was stronger than Shiro's rebuke, swishing around down there in the drum of his lungs. There was so much steam inside him he was confused when it didn't spill out, a haze on every word.

"We promised to be the defenders of the universe. We promised to protect people, Shiro." Keith yanked his own boots on, hating how it made no difference: barefoot or booted, his connection to Caretaker was gone.

"And we will, when we can." Shiro was almost fully suited up. The hole in the side of the armour was ragged and ugly. "Do you honestly think I'm okay with this? Do you think I wouldn't have saved them if there was even half a chance of succeeding?"

"We did have a chance! They didn't know we were here, we could have -"

"They did know. Caretaker told us that."

"Caretaker also called us for help."

"And they chose not to give us away when we didn't come. They protected us anyway. That was their choice, and we have to respect it."

"It's not good enough!" Even though he'd just put them on, Keith yanked at the fingers of his gloves, tore them off, and hurled them at Shiro. They slapped harmlessly against his chest and he let them fall. "We're not enough. Not on our own. We show up - these strange aliens in war machines, and accept their help - and we just let them die. We can't be seen, we're alone, we're vulnerable, I get that, and it's stupid. What the fuck point is there if we let this happen? What the fuck are we doing, Shiro?"

"Keith, I know how you feel, and you're right. But this isn't helping."

He was deescalating, but Keith wasn't ready to gear down. With both hands, he shoved Shiro away. His back hit the metal partition and he winced, but stayed there, hands raised peaceably.

"You know they might never find us," Keith said. "That wormhole could have spat us out anywhere, and the castle could have been destroyed or Allura could have died, and the universe is too big without them - "

"I know," Shiro said, reaching out. Keith knocked his hand away and grabbed Shiro by the undone collar of his flight suit, pinning him in place.

"So maybe we let this play out and no one ever finds us and Caretaker died for nothing. What then, Shiro?"

"Then we live with it," Shiro said evenly. "But for now, protecting the Lions is our priority. Without them, there's no Voltron, and without Voltron, there's no hope for anyone. This isn't about us, or about one planet. It's about all of them."

Keith's fists curled tighter on Shiro's suit, so hard the bones in his fingers creaked. "Yeah, I can do the math. But you sure did it a hell of a lot quicker."

"Keith, that's enough." Shiro's hands came up slowly and covered Keith's where they still gripped his jacket. He didn't attempt to free himself or push back, and the hard knot of rage that was clenched inside Keith's chest began to shake apart. "I'm angry, too, okay? I hate this just as much as you do. I'm scared. But I'm not going to fight you any more, no matter how much you want me to." His voice softened. "Right now, you're all I have."

It was a tidy one-two punch, the kind only Shiro had ever been able to deliver. His words wrung the anger from Keith. He felt it go, all at once, as though a plug had been pulled and it had just drained out. He bowed his head and sagged against Shiro, whose arms rose to pull him in close.

"We're not broken," Shiro said quietly. "We're just lost, and it's not going to be forever. There's a way back. We just...haven't figured it out yet."

"How can you know that?" Keith wasn't sure he was expecting an answer, wasn't even sure he'd asked the question until Shiro's arms tightened their grip.

"It's been true for me once before," he said, and there was something running underneath the level tone of his voice that made Keith bury his face in Shiro's chest. "The Galra - "

Shiro stopped, like he always did before sharing details of his time in captivity. Keith held his breath, and Shiro let his out shakily. He didn't continue.

The flashback seemed to cost him. The air between them was heavy in a way it hadn't been before; Shiro's breathing wasn't as easy as it had been before. Keith swallowed around a spike of guilt. He hadn't meant to make Shiro go back to those memories, hadn't meant to remind him of what they weren't preventing, lost out here.

Shiro seemed to realize, abruptly, that he'd been holding Keith for quite a long time. His arms slid self-consciously from Keith's shoulders, but Keith didn't fully step back. He leaned away, taking his weight off of Shiro, and he took his hands off his collar, too, crossing his arms in front of his chest instead. He recognized that the posture was defensive, didn't care. If he left now he wouldn't say it, and Shiro deserved to know.

He tipped his head down, not quite able to look Shiro in the eye. "Do you know why I left the Garrison?"

The question seemed to take him by surprise. "Because you wanted to? I know you didn't flunk out, no matter what Lance says. You're the best pilot I've ever seen."

Keith snorted. "They flunked me out for lack of discipline, not aptitude. And they didn't want me to leave, even then. Thought they could turn me around."

There was something unspoken in those memories: the Garrison, in need of a new golden boy to hold up, to take over, to erase the failure of the last one. Even now, Keith could feel the echo of the spitting fury with which he'd driven himself away from them. He carried it like embers in his gut. Never out, not completely.

"I left," said Keith, "because they said it was pilot error that caused the Kerberos mission to go missing. They kept saying you were dead, and it was your own fault. And I just - I knew that wasn't right. So they were lying, and something important had happened, and I needed to know what. But I knew, more than all of that, that you were missing, and it was driving me crazy."

Shiro suddenly didn't know what to do with his hands. One came up to rest on the back of his own neck, and then he touched the metal one briefly, lightly, to Keith's hip before letting it drop away again. Something in Keith lit up, like a piece of flint knocking a spark into life.

"Well," Shiro said eventually, "you found me."

Keith let out a nervous laugh. "Yeah. Imagine my surprise when I broke in, hoping for information, and found you instead."

"Most of me," Shiro corrected with a smile, holding up his right arm and making a loose fist. For the briefest moment, it lit the air purple between them. The light changed the angles on Shiro's face, shone fiercely in his eyes, in his hair. It suited him, Keith thought, but it also made him look older, somehow. Sadder. Then it faded, and he let it drop, or would have. Keith caught it on the way down.

"It's kept you alive," he said. "It doesn't make you less than yourself. It just means that the Galra were dumb enough to think they owned you, and you're making them pay for it."

Shiro let his hand rest easily in Keith's. "Hell of a way to put it," he said, and there was something different in his voice, a catch or a strain, that made Keith glance up.

The expression that he found on Shiro's face nearly bowled him right over. It was so intent - and on him, on nothing but him, all of the presence and capability and gentleness and ferocity that Keith had been coveting since his first day in the academy, turned on him. He swallowed with difficulty, finding that his throat had gone dry.

"What did you mean," Shiro said, "that my absence was driving you crazy?"

Keith felt colour flood his face. He kept his head down, ran a thumb over the inside of Shiro's wrist, the joints fine as hair, as spiderwebs. Beautiful, monstrous work. "C'mon," he said, and heard his voice as though it was coming from impossibly far away. "You know why."

He could hear his blood in his ears, could feel the words hanging between them like weights on a line. Shiro was utterly still. Keith closed his eyes, prepared himself for the moment when Shiro would pull his hand away, push him back, because they were a team and this couldn't be like it was before, he'd always known it couldn't be -

With infinite gentleness, Shiro laid his human hand over Keith's, making them fall still. It occurred to Keith that Shiro was holding his hands, but not - not the way he wanted, not in the way that mattered, more like a condolence than a connection, and suddenly he only wanted to go back to his house in the desert where nobody knew he even existed. He tried to pull away, but Shiro held him there.

The flint in Keith struck out another spark.

"I think I guessed," Shiro said slowly, as though he was working it out as he went. "I couldn't be sure and I couldn't just ask. I didn't know how much of it was....wishful thinking, on my part."

"On _your_ part?" Keith said. "What did you think it all meant?"

All. It was a heavy word for such a small one. 'All' contained every time he'd let Shiro drag him out to the desert, to the shack, in their Garrison days, when neither of them could sleep. 'All' was leaving behind his future when Shiro went missing, leaving behind his planet to pilot Voltron. It was every time he'd stepped between Shiro and danger, between Shiro and his PTSD, between Shiro and his nightmares.

'All' was every time he'd touched Shiro's shoulder, every time they'd sparred, every time Shiro had tilted his face back under the stars and kissed him, back when they were just starting to figure this out.

They understood each other, he and Shiro. They just needed more time than they'd been given.

"I always knew it meant something," Shiro said. "I just never knew what."

"Oh, come on. You had to know."

"I knew what I wanted it to mean," he countered.

The flint in Keith was held to a grindstone. It made a cascade of sparks, a river of light inside his chest. "Okay," he said. "When we get home, we're gonna figure out what exactly you want it to mean. But I'm with you," he said, and watched as the knowledge hit Shiro. "Whatever it is, I'm with you. I always have been."

"Keith -"

Movement, then, out of the corner of their eyes. They spun to face it together, Keith’s hand already on his bayard.

It was a Caretaker.

There was only one. It was a milky white colour, more opaque than Keith had ever seen, and its arms drooped as it moved towards them.

"Caretaker!" Keith broke away from Shiro, ran to meet it. He sunk to his knees in front of it and let it collapse with slow tenderness into his arms.

_Paladin Keith_ , they said. _We are pleased to find you safe._

"You shouldn't have done that for us," he said. "Can we help you? Tell us how."

_You must go_ , said Caretaker. _They search for you. They will do you harm._

"We'll stop them," said Keith fiercely, and Caretaker sighed.

_You must go. If you want to help us, you must survive._

"I don't understand." Shiro had come to crouch next to them, and his human hand rested gently on one of Caretaker's arms. "How can we help you if we leave?"

_You are Caretaker, too,_ they said, _and if you want to save us, you must come back with help._

All at once, Keith got it. "You can repair yourself." Keith glanced over at Shiro, hope rising in his chest, a cautious flutter. Shiro looked back at him, steady and sure. "You need us to bring you more energy so that you can get better."

_Yes._ Caretaker wavered, rose from Keith's lap. _We are limited, and weak. We have other patients we must check on. Please, Paladin Keith. You must go._

"Can you -" Keith bit his tongue on the question, knowing there was a good chance this was partially his fault. There were only two possibilities: either they'd been tracked, somehow, through the wormhole and the vastness of the universe, or Rext had betrayed them.

It was a simple fact that he'd only arrived at now. Caretaker's scream echoed in his memory: your fault, your fault.

Impossible, that he still hoped Rext was okay. But he'd liked him, and he wanted to know.

_Your friend, Rext, lives_ , said Caretaker kindly. _He regrets the actions of his people._

It would have to do. He could explain it to Shiro later.

"Okay. We'll go, and when we find our friends, we'll come back. Hang on, Caretaker. I promise we'll return as soon as we can."

_We know. Be well, Paladin Keith, until we meet again._

Shiro helped pull him to his feet, and they took off for the cavern at a run, leaving the lone Caretaker to float painfully off to their next destination.

"They have to see us leave," Shiro said grimly. "They'll chase us, and we'll have to outrun them. No other choice, now."

"Not if we want to save Caretaker after all." It was easy to be positive about this, with Shiro at his side, but the practical part of Keith’s brain nagged him. He knew how Caretaker felt, when it was healthy. And now it felt wrong, weak. Like nothing at all, almost.

Would they lie about being able to survive, if it would encourage them to run? To save themselves?

Of course they would.

“Shiro, do you think -”

"Ye-agh! Hang on, I c-" Shiro stopped, breathed shallow breaths. His hand hovered over his side, and Keith saw fresh blood, torn open when he'd moved too quickly. Then Shiro gathered himself, brought out the voice that had once boomed across every inch of the Garrison's training floor, and called to Black.

In the cavern, the Lions answered with a roar, loud enough to shake the mountain. They'd rested long enough, and now they wanted a chase.

And there was something whispering under their noise, something faint enough that Keith might have imagined it.

But it sure sounded a lot like Blue was roaring with them.

They could do this. They weren't broken, just lost, and it wouldn't be forever. The Lions would find each other.

Wherever their family was, they'd find each other.

"I'm sorry we fought," Keith said.

Shiro blew out a breath. "Me too. I don't want to do that ever again."

But everything else - that hadn't been all bad.

"I'm sorry about your arm. You don't have to tell me what you decided to do. Either way, I'm sorry for that too." He thought of Rext, saying _come visit_. He thought of Caretaker's vast heartbeat, an energy that sang under his skin. He tipped his face up to the soft sunlight. "But damn, Shiro, I wish we could have stayed."

Shiro's face betrayed nothing of his decision, but he dropped a hand on Keith's shoulder and let it linger there for just a moment. In the language only they spoke, it meant _we're okay._ "Maybe when this is all over, we can come back. At least for a while."

And that reminded him of something he'd meant to say since Rext had found food for him. It felt like days ago.

Keith knocked his shoulder against Shiro's. "You know, I got this feeling when I saw those ration packs."

Shiro looked over, curious.

"Like we were meant to be here, like no matter what we did, we were always going to end up here, together. But I wanted to say I've felt like that since I met you. The stars have always called us by the same name, like we were the same thing, like we were part of something bigger than ourselves. Now I know what they were calling us, at least."

Shiro's mouth bent in a knowing curve, and he didn't look at Keith. He watched the Lions as they came bounding from the cavern, answering their Paladin's call. They were flying, sparing Caretaker the impact of their running; if not for that, their footfalls would have landed with the force of earthquakes.

"I don't know what we are to each other, Shiro. I don't know what happens next, or where we go. But you and I are gonna be partners until they bury our bones in the fucking stars."

It wasn't quite what he'd meant to say, but Shiro gave a smile of perfect agreement, and he put on his helmet. Keith ducked his head inside his own, and for a moment there was only the hiss as the seals engaged, the flicker as the HUD calibrated.

Then Shiro reached out and grabbed his shoulder, and when Keith turned he knocked their helmets together and held there. "Partners," he said.

"Partners." Keith thumped Shiro's opposite shoulder, a grounding connection on a live wire.

Shiro straightened, stood tall. His suit was still torn, bloodstained, singed; his face was still scarred; his arm was still Galra tech. But he was whole in a way he hadn't been before, and Keith could feel the steadiness in him.

Caretaker couldn't fix everything; there were some ways in which Shiro would have to save himself. But he wouldn't do it alone. Keith would be with him.

And soon, so would everyone else.

"Come on," said Keith, and the Lions crouched and dropped their jaws, rolling a wave of relief and welcome over them. "Let's go home.”

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> In case anyone is curious yeah there's gonna be a sequel to this. yeah it might also be about 14k already. yeah i need an intervention


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